The invention relates to food processing and more particularly to method and apparatus for processing food by-products produced, for example, by produce houses, restaurants, institutional kitchens, food processors, groceries and other businesses performing similar food processing activities.
When food is processed for consumption, there is waste. Groceries preparing produce for sale trim and cull the produce so that only the most desirable is displayed. Likewise with restaurants preparing food for eating. Stale produce from display shelves and leftover food from dining tables are removed, post-consumption, and are either disposed or recycled. These food by-products often have high water content, and their high density makes them difficult to handle and expensive to transport. Often, such food by-products are transported by truck to landfills. The trucks used in transportation are high-volume waste containers that have been designed for containment of relatively low-density materials. Thus, a truck transporting food by-products typically travels from waste pickup locations to landfills only partly full so as not to exceed the gross vehicle weight limits imposed by the trucking industry, motor vehicle division or transportation and interstate commerce departments.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,744,006 entitled APPARATUS FOR DEWATERING MIXTURES OF FIBROUS AND LIQUID MATERIALS issued Apr. 28, 1998 is illustrative of the prior art. That patent discloses an endless belt conveyor de-watering system having opposed rollers, the position of one of the rollers being manually adjustable to form a fixed pressure gap at the opposed rollers' point of tangency through which a continuous web of fibrous/liquid mixture is passed. U.S. Pat. No. 5,176,825 entitled SYSTEM FOR TREATING FOOD WASTE BY CENTRIFUGAL SPIN DRUM AND BAG FILTER issued Jan. 5, 1993 describes a food waste processing system. The food waste processing system features an apertured drum which is spun (as in the centrifugal rinse cycle for a washing machine) to remove water from material contained therein. U.S. Pat. No. 5,906,793 entitled PROCESS FOR THE DISPOSAL OF WET REFUSE issued May 25, 1999 describes a heating process for cooking and drying refuse. U.S. Pat. No. 5,924,217 entitled LIQUID REMOVAL CONVEYOR SYSTEM AND METHOD issued Jul. 20, 1999 describes a conveyor system including a liquid-permeable belt, an agitator for jostling the belt and the material traveling therealong, and a suction plenum for sucking the liquid through the belt.